from the commonwealth club of california, this is about one hour. [applause] >> thank you for coming. we are delighted to be here. welcome. seven years ago, there was a consensus in washington that the earth's atmosphere could be altered. it is a different story. over the next hour, we will discuss opinion, with james hansen and our live audience here at the in san francisco. today, dr. hansen is receiving the 2012 stephen schneider award for outstanding climate science climate one. stephen schneider was a who was involved in the formation of climate one that[applause] sandy. new york? to place it in a modern context, we have to turn to proxy data like coral and ice to piece together the puzzle of how the climate buried in the distant past. it showed it was relatively warm. it was about a thousand years ago. recently that exceeded anything we have seen. it was featured in the summary for policy makers in 2001. when it became an icon, those who find the science inconvenient saw the need to try to discredit this graph. they saw discrediting me as a wa